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By Jinsoo Kim '18
I was very lazy when I was a kid—not to mention that this laziness still lives within me today. Anyhow, the reason for this laziness wasn’t a matter of how I didn’t want to do this or that, but it stemmed from the prophet-like omens I saw in my daydreams, in which robots would carry me to class, tie my shoes, put my clothes on for me, drive me to school, wake me up in the morning, and listen to my every single command. I thought, who the hell would care about how hard, how rigorous, and how much a robot would not want to do all of these menial tasks? No one…except the robots themselves.
Current day technology is advancing at an amazing pace; with inventions such as Siri, AlphaGo, and Alexa, the world is evolving in a way that affects not only those who are capable of using these robots, but also those who live in an environment with these machines present. Even at Episcopal, many students use Siri on a daily, even hourly basis to set up alarms, search a vocabulary word on the web, or send a quick text a friend. Although voice recognition softwares aren’t essentially “artificial intelligence,” they are very much considered the closest thing we have in our daily lives to human made devices that can learn on their own, and have the capacity to reason or think. In the near future, robots will be dominating our very lives without us even knowing about it. You can easily compare this phenomenon to your use of a smart phone, which already probably has complete control of your life like it has of mine. Think about the number of times that you didn’t have your phone on you; think about the amount of time you actually spend on your phone each day; think about life without a phone.
Robots are influencing so much of each and every single one of our lives at such a fast rate that it’s scary. By 2020, 85% of all customer service interactions will be powered by artificial intelligence. By 2018, robots will be able to have a conversation with you and record everything you say to “him” or “her” and store that information as “memory.” The old me would definitely think that this is exactly what I need--robots. However, I now know for a fact that this new “race” can definitely get out of hand. There are too many “if’s” and “but’s” with regards to innovation that involve the development of artificial intelligence, and I am sure as hell not ready to become friends with a robot in the next few years, decades even.
So what does this have to do with my laziness? Despite the reality that artificial intelligence is progressing, and movies such as I, Robot and Avengers: Age of Ultron are continuing to freak me out, I am still lazy. However, I now know that I would much rather go to class myself, tie my shoes myself, put my clothes on myself, drive myself to school, and wake myself up in the morning than to face an army of man-made robots hungry for my life. While robots that clean your room for you to avoid failing room inspection may sound like the very thing you need for your life to brighten up, it could very well be the thing that darkens it at the same time. For every reward, there are risks, and for every robot, there is laziness.
Tonner, Andrew. "9 Artificial Intelligence Stats That Will Blow You Away." The Motley Fool. The Motley Fool, 10 Dec. 2016. Web. 19 Feb. 2017.
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